Former Rovio Executives’ Plan: Mimic Rovio

Two executives who recently departed Finnish gaming giant Rovio Entertainment have emerged with plans for a new company. It looks a lot like the one they left.

Co-founder Petri Jr0076ilehto

Seriously

Andrew Stalbow and Petri Järvilehto on Tuesday announced a new company called Seriously that hopes to generate revenue from more than just games.

Rovio, best known for its Angry Birds franchise, derives a little more than half of its €152.2 million in revenue from games. The other half comes from the sale of mugs, T-shirts, children’s books and other products depicting the characters from Angry Birds characters.

Mobile-gaming companies are increasingly making alliances in other industries, a move long known to traditional gaming companies. Mojang, for example, has licensed the hit Minecraft brand name to LEGO for a series of play sets. King, the maker of the popular game Candy Crush Saga, recently released a pair of socks that cost $12.

It’s a strategy Seriously’s founders say they know something about. Stalbow led Rovio’s strategic-partnerships business, inking deals with Hasbro and Lucasfilm, and overseeing the advent of an Angry Birds cartoons series. Järvilehto was Rovio’s games chief, though he joined after the advent of Angry Birds. Prior to joining Rovio, Stalbow ran 20th Century Fox’s mobile division, while Järvilehto co-founded a Finnish gaming firm that created the popular Max Payne franchise.

Seriously, which like Rovio plans to operate in California and Helsinki, faces a tough climb. The industry is riddled with wide-eyed developers who weren’t able to get their games noticed on the crowded app-store shelves. And with no games right now, Seriously has no hot intellectual property to license.

Stalbow said that he and Järvilehto, having been part of the core team during a period of breakneck growth at Rovio, know the formula for building free-to-play games that become household names. Stalbow didn’t provide details on Seriously’s game designs, but said the company next year will begin launching strategic games that require a lot of thinking.

Co-founder Andrew Stalbow

Seriously

Rovio, which has its sights set on being an entertainment powerhouse on the level of Disney, needs new gaming successes. Stalbow didn’t say why he jumped ship at this time, other than “it was just time for me to do something on my own.”

The duo are the latest executives to leave Rovio, joining the head of communications and marketing, the chief operating officer and the head of advertising out the door. Last year, a trio of Rovio long-timers set up Boomlagoon after receiving funding from a venture-capital firm that also backed Finland’s latest success, Supercell. Since then, Boomlagoon has hired two additional recruits from Rovio, including the person known for creating Angry Birds’ iconic art.

Rovio welcomed the new competition from Seriously. New start-ups are arriving frequently in Finland, and the community “is very tight knit and active,” spokeswoman Sara Antila said.